Plants are commercially grown in environmentally controlled enclosures (ECEs) which enable the operators to modify environmental conditions inside the enclosures as compared to the environmental conditions which exist outside of the environmentally controlled enclosures. While enclosures for growing plants are often used for to extend growing seasons, maintain temperatures, and control the watering of plants, environmentally controlled enclosures can also be used to increase growth of plants, as well as to optimize various plant properties.
Factors which are important to the grown of plants include the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to which the plants are exposed, and the intensity of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) to which the plants are exposed. Plants exposed to natural light convert a portion of the radiation energy received from the light, namely that portion of natural light with photons having a wave length of between about 400 nanometers and about 700 nanometers, into chemical energy, and generate plant matter, which in most cases may be generalized according to the following equation:6H2O+6CO2+‘PAR photons’→C6H12O6+6O2 
The reaction is substantially the same when light is received from artificial light sources having suitable wavelength(s) to provide photosynthetically active radiation. It suffices to understand that for plants to grow they need water (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2) and photons with PAR wavelengths.
In addition, plants require environmental conditions conducive to growth. Accordingly, provision of suitable ranges of temperature, pressure, and absolute humidity is necessary when providing artificial environments for plant growth. Also, to generate proteins and complex cellular matter essential for growth, plants also require micro nutrients. Generally, plant growth is a chemical reaction, and it needs the basic reactants of (1) water, (2) carbon dioxide, (3) light, and (4) micro nutrients. If any one of the elements is limited (less abundant than the others in portion to the stoichiometry of the reaction), then the limited element will determine the number of reactions and growth of the plant.
Further, rooted plants are generally configured to transpire water. Water is taken into the plant at its roots, and then passes through the vascular system to the stomata in the leaf of the plant, where the water changes from liquid to vapor, and is diffused into the gases surrounding the plant, normally air. Water adjacent the root structure of plants may contain micro nutrients, which, if present, are pulled into the plant by the uptake and transpiration of water.
Transpiration of water from a plant results in natural evaporative cooling of the plant. Obviously, some of the water drawn into the roots is associated with the creation of plant matter and moisture in the plant body. The amount of water needed as an element of growth is small in comparison to overall transpiration. If a plant is adequately watered and other environmental conditions are in the correct range, the plant will transpire. If a plant is not watered, it loses the natural ability to cool itself, its source of micro nutrients, and one of the basic requirements for photosynthesis
The intensity of light available to growing plants, as measured by photon flux or other comparable indicative parameter of photosynthetically active radiation, is well known to affect the growth rate of plants. Likewise, the amount of available carbon dioxide in an environmentally controlled enclosure where plants are growing is well known to affect the growth rate of plants.
In general, the growth of plants is proportional to their transpiration rate. And, the overall energy demand of a plant is primarily due to the requirement to supply the energy necessary for the transformation of water into water vapor during transpiration, i.e. the latent heat of vaporization of the water being transpired.
While the basic principles of plant growth are understood, apparent deficiencies in current plant growing practices indicate that it would nevertheless be desirable to provide improved systems and methods for enhancing the growth of plants, and for optimizing parameters to achieve desired growth rates of plants. Additionally, it would be desirable to provide systems and methods for collection of data which would enable optimization and repetition of desired growth rate conditions. In some embodiments, such systems and methods may involve maximizing growth of plants. In other embodiments, such system and methods may involve optimization of other qualities, such as taste, or sugar content, or maximizing the production of selected constituents such as essential oils. And, in some embodiments, it would also be desirable to provide improved systems and methods for the optimization of costs for the supply ingredients necessary for optimizing plant growth, namely for the optimization of the costs for operational energy and for water required for the growth of plants. Thus, there remains a need for a systems and methods which provides the equipment, sensors, control technology, and other components necessary for successful optimization of such requirements, in order to provide an environmentally controlled enclosure for optimizing the growth of plants for producing consistent results as optimized for a selected outcome, whether that be maximizing growth rate, optimization of characteristics or qualities such as taste, sugar content, essential oil content, or other constituents which may be economically important in horticultural production, or determining the economic intersection of minimization of costs of production such as water and energy, while maximizing the value of the plants produced.